Since prehistoric times, artists have applied and manipulated paint on substrates. Very early artists might have used their bare hands and fingers, as do children and even artists today, but the use of tools for painting became common very early. Some of the earliest of such tools were likely mere sticks. However, brushes have been known and in use for much of modern history. Traditionally, the bristles, which form the media-engaging working-head formation of such brushes, were formed from natural materials such as the hair of animals, although with the development of modern synthetic plastics, artificial filaments have become available; typically, the hairs/filaments are attached via a ferrule to a wooden handle. Brushes have similarly been used for hundreds of years in the application of cosmetics or make-up to the skin of the human body, particularly the skin of the face.
While hair/filament brushes are widely used, and are extremely versatile, especially since they are nowadays available in a wide variety of sizes and shapes and with varying granularity and coarseness of the hairs/filaments, enabling the production of a seemingly unlimited assortment of marks and brush stroke textures, there is, nevertheless, a need for a brush-type tool which is more universal in its application characteristics, so that such a tool may be used, for example, to blend and smudge powdery soft pastel materials, which the coarse boar bristles of a conventional oil painting brush are not ordinarily able to catch and hold.
Besides hair/filament brushes, alternative tools and implements have been developed to assist artists, craftsperson, hobbyists and others in the application and manipulation of paint and other media. Perhaps the most well-known among these are painting and palette knives, which although developed more recently than brushes, have nevertheless been known, and have remained virtually unchanged, for hundreds of years. These implements are used to scrape, mix, apply and manipulate paint and other traditional media, including glues, grouts and clays, either on a palette or directly on a canvas or other work surface. Traditional painting and palette knives generally resemble small trowels, and consist of a flexible metal blade attached to a handle (which is typically wooden); the blade, which forms the media-engaging working-head formation of these implements, may be formed in a variety of shapes, including round, pear-shaped, diamond-shaped, straight-sided, and hybrid shapes. More recently, such tools have also been fabricated entirely of plastic.
Although these knives are useful, and they provide some advantages over traditional hair/filament brushes in terms of longevity and cleaning, their usefulness is limited because these tools typically have a more limited range of marks and manners of applying. media to a surface; in other words, it is difficult to paint with a hard (albeit flexible), non-absorbent blade that is primarily a flat, two-dimensional surface. The texture that can be created by using such a knife is very specific, because the flat, two-dimensional shape effectively limits the manner in which these tools can be used to produce trowel-like strokes. In addition, these knives are useful almost exclusively for applying and manipulating only thick, viscous media having a consistency resembling that of soft paste, such as the “impasto” forms of paint; these knives are almost useless to apply dry media, such as soft pastels. These well-known undesirable characteristics of traditional painting and palette knives deter many artists, craftspersons and hobbyists from using them.
Recently, still other tools with which artists, craftspersons, hobbyists, and others may apply and manipulate paint and other media have been developed, such as the specialized tools described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,542,144, 5,689,872, 5,749,117, 5,850,664, 6,032,322, 6,308,371 and 6,319,004. These painting, drawing, craft and dental tools consist of cylindrical handle formed of wood, plastic or metal, to which a molded silicone rubber “tip,” which forms the media-engaging working-head formation of these implements, is attached via a ferrule. The silicone rubber formations are flexible yet durable, and are nonabsorbent and non-stick (and therefore easy to clean), which makes them ideal for use by artists, craftsperson, hobbyists and dental technicians for applying, manipulating and removing a wide variety of art and craft media, including paints, pastels, charcoal, pencil, clays, adhesives, sealants and other polymer-based materials. These tools are currently marketed and sold under the trademark COLOUR SHAPER, and they are available with a variety of useful, differently-shaped working-head formations, including conical taper point, as well as flat chisel, angle chisel, cupped round, and cupped chisel configurations.
Despite their advantages, however, these new tools cannot be used in the application of certain media. Indeed, it is the very same non-absorbent, nonstick characteristics of their working-head formations which make these tools so ideal for use with other media, that also make them less than ideal for use with dry media, such as soft pastels, and low-viscosity media, such as certain inks as well as watercolor forms of paint.
Accordingly, there is a need to improve existing art and craft tools so that each can be used to apply, distribute, manipulate and/or remove a wider variety of media, including dry drawing media, and so that each can be used to create a wider variety of marks and textures with those media, all ideally without permanently surrendering the beneficial existing characteristics of their native media-engaging working-head formations; it is the principal object of the present invention to provide such an improvement.
In addition, it is another objective of the present invention to provide a modification of the presently existing art and craft tools so as to allow them to be used in the application and manipulation of certain novel color compositions which have recently been developed by the present inventors and as to which separate patent applications are presently pending.